City of Miami Beach takes the graffiti very seriously, DBQ. You should come on down. E.g. -- the moment the squiggles go up, they send over a squad of city workers to paint over it (usually the very next day it's gone).

Not that there's a lot of that in SoBe anyway.

It's not a city like NY where frustration boils over, where self-expression needs an outlet, where there is a gang presence, or where everything is so old that it's barely hanging on to its rust.

Hence the creation of robo-squirrel Rocky at Hampshire College in Massachusetts (pictured), where researchers are studying whether the robot's squirrelly ways will allow it to mingle with the fully-biological, acorn-chomping natives.

"Parker and Broderick keep a running count of these changes, a mutual mourning for the transformation of their neighborhood into a luxe, tree-lined shopping mall. She knows this sounds absurd coming from her, that people blame Sex and the City for the ruination of the West Village; even Broderick says, “That’s your fault!” when he sees a thong poking up from low-slung jeans, and her close friend John Benjamin Hickey, an actor, longs for the days before “those girls on buses.” Parker clarifies that she doesn’t want to sound like Madonna bemoaning what’s happened to New York: It’s not that there’s no “creative energy” in the air, it’s simply been priced out of this particular borough."

Read the article. It's not as insipid as it sounds.

I even ordered New Grub Street and The Moonstone on Amazon already, as well as "An Unmarried Woman" with Jill Clayburgh.

And I cannot tell you how blush-making it is for me to admit that I'm taking reading tips from Carrie Bradshaw.

SJP was on Dennis Miller's HBO show back in the day, and I was rather impressed by the way she carried herself. She had a certain dignity, and seemed to be able to actually express herself intelligently on the topic of government.

SJP was on Dennis Miller's HBO show back in the day, and I was rather impressed by the way she carried herself. She had a certain dignity, and seemed to be able to actually express herself intelligently on the topic of government.

I used to have the exact same opinion of her, Blake.

Pre-or-Early SATC, she was a different, more confident, less self-conscious person. She was even less political, in that alertless NY way.

Heh. But a total ripoff of Totie Fields speaking about Jackie O, whilst looking at a 50 cent coin, and saying with a Noo Yawk accent, "Yeah, I f*cked 'im."

She was totally taken aback.

I guess the late '90s was a more genteel time.

No, the thing is, and you can see this transparently in this interview, is that she bought into the whole Broderick clan's Peter Duchin world (he even played at their wedding...where she wore a black wedding dress).

She was but a poor gypsy family waif from Cincinnati, and like many people for whom NYC is some kind of Cosmopolitan Wonderland, full of transients like her, meeting the real thing in the Brodericks was daunting.

Today, she reminds one of a slightly oppressed rabbit. It's a very sad transformation, this buttoning up. It's almost as if she has this vision of what a NY grande dame is, but she's playing it less like Brooke Astor than Walter Mitty.

She's almost pitifully politically-correct now (she gave her son, James Wilkie, a DVD copy of Brokeback Mountain, so he could be exposed to "true love"), and with that goes along a feeling that she killed the NY of her dreams.

I rather feel like introducing her to Ann. She'd shake the cobwebs out of this girl (well 43 year old girl), in a trice.